247 research outputs found
Fitting functions for a disk-galaxy model with different LCDM-halo profiles
We present an adaptation of the standard scenario of disk-galaxy formation to
the concordant LCDM cosmology aimed to derive analytical expressions for the
scale length and rotation speed of present-day disks that form within four
different, cosmologically motivated protogalactic dark matter halo-density
profiles. We invoke a standard galaxy-formation model that includes virial
equilibrium of spherical dark halos, specific angular momentum conservation
during gas cooling, and adiabatic halo response to the gas inflow. The mean
mass-fraction and mass-to-light ratio of the central stellar disk are treated
as free parameters whose values are tuned to match the zero points of the
observed size-luminosity and circular speed-luminosity relations of galaxies.
We supply analytical formulas for the characteristic size and rotation speed of
disks built inside Einasto r^{1/6}, Hernquist, Burkert, and Navarro-Frenk-White
dark matter halos. These expressions match simultaneously the observed zero
points and slopes of the different correlations that can be built in the RVL
space of disk galaxies from plausible values of the galaxy- and star-formation
efficiencies
A Library of Integrated Spectra of Galactic Globular Clusters
We present a new library of integrated spectra of 40 Galactic globular
clusters, obtained with the Blanco 4-m telescope and the R-C spectrograph at
the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory. The spectra cover the range ~ 3350
-- 6430 A with ~ 3.1 A (FWHM) resolution. The spectroscopic observations and
data reduction were designed to integrate the full projected area within the
cluster core radii in order to properly sample the light from stars in all
relevant evolutionary stages. The S/N values of the flux-calibrated spectra
range from 50 to 240/A at 4000 A and from 125 to 500/A at 5000 A. The selected
targets span a wide range of cluster parameters, including metallicity,
horizontal-branch morphology, Galactic coordinates, Galactocentric distance,
and concentration. The total sample is thus fairly representative of the entire
Galactic globular cluster population and should be valuable for comparison with
similar integrated spectra of unresolved stellar populations in remote systems.
For most of the library clusters, our spectra can be coupled with deep
color-magnitude diagrams and reliable metal abundances from the literature to
enable the calibration of stellar population synthesis models. In this paper we
present a detailed account of the observations and data reduction. The spectral
library is publicly available in electronic format from the National Optical
Astronomical Observatory website.Comment: 39 Pages, including 2 tables and 15 Figures. To appear in the
Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Serie
Galaxy Masses
Galaxy masses play a fundamental role in our understanding of structure
formation models. This review addresses the variety and reliability of mass
estimators that pertain to stars, gas, and dark matter. The different sections
on masses from stellar populations, dynamical masses of gas-rich and gas-poor
galaxies, with some attention paid to our Milky Way, and masses from weak and
strong lensing methods, all provide review material on galaxy masses in a
self-consistent manner.Comment: 145 pages, 28 figures, to appear in Reviews of Modern Physics. Figure
22 is missing here, and Figs. 15, 26-28 are at low resolution. This version
has a slightly different title and some typos fixed in Chapter 5. For the
full review with figures, please consult:
http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~courteau/GalaxyMasses_28apr2014.pd
Large-scale cosmic flows and moving dark energy
Large-scale matter bulk flows with respect to the cosmic microwave background
have very recently been detected on scales 100 Mpc/h and 300 Mpc/h by using two
different techniques showing an excellent agreement in the motion direction.
However, the unexpectedly large measured amplitudes are difficult to understand
within the context of standard LCDM cosmology. In this work we show that the
existence of such a flow could be signaling the presence of moving dark energy
at the time when photons decoupled from matter. We also comment on the relation
between the direction of the CMB dipole and the preferred axis observed in the
quadrupole in this scenario.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures. New comments and references included. Final
version to appear in JCA
Near-Infrared Adaptive Optics Imaging of the Central Regions of Nearby Sc Galaxies. II. NGC 247 and NGC 2403
J, H, and K' images obtained with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope adaptive
optics system are used to investigate the star-forming histories of the central
regions of the Sc galaxies NGC 247 and NGC 2403. The brightest resolved red
stars within 15 arcsec of the nucleus of each galaxy are red supergiants,
indicating that the central few hundred parsecs of these galaxies experienced
star formation within the last ~ 0.1 Gyr. However, when averaged over Gyr time
scales, the star-forming histories of the inner disks of these galaxies have
been remarkably similar, as expected if the long-term evolution of disks is
defined by local characteristics such as mass density. It is demonstrated that
NGC 247 and NGC 2403, like M33, harbour nuclear star clusters with stellar
contents that differ from the surrounding central light concentrations. The
nucleus of NGC 2403 is significantly bluer than that of the other two galaxies
and the K-band surface brightnesses near the centers of NGC 247 and NGC 2403
are 1 -- 2 mag per square arcsec lower than in M33. Finally, it is noted that
young or intermediate-age nuclear star clusters are a common occurence in
nearby spirals, indicating that nuclear star formation in these objects is
either continuous or episodic on time scales of 0.1 - 1 Gyr.Comment: 27 pages of text and 14 figures; to appear in the Astronomical
Journa
The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey. VII. The intrinsic shapes of low-luminosity galaxies in the core of the Virgo cluster, and a comparison with the Local Group
(Abridged) We investigate the intrinsic shapes of low-luminosity galaxies in
the central 300 kpc of the Virgo cluster using deep imaging obtained as part of
the NGVS. We build a sample of nearly 300 red-sequence cluster members in the
yet unexplored magnitude range. The observed distribution of
apparent axis ratios is then fit by families of triaxial models with
normally-distributed intrinsic ellipticities and triaxialities. We develop a
Bayesian framework to explore the posterior distribution of the model
parameters, which allows us to work directly on discrete data, and to account
for individual, surface brightness-dependent axis ratio uncertainties. For this
population we infer a mean intrinsic ellipticity E=0.43, and a mean triaxiality
T=0.16. This implies that faint Virgo galaxies are best described as a family
of thick, nearly oblate spheroids with mean intrinsic axis ratios 1:0.94:0.57.
We additionally attempt a study of the intrinsic shapes of Local Group
satellites of similar luminosities. For the LG population we infer a slightly
larger mean intrinsic ellipticity E=0.51, and the paucity of objects with round
apparent shapes translates into more triaxial mean shapes, 1:0.76:0.49. We
finally compare the intrinsic shapes of NGVS low-mass galaxies with samples of
more massive quiescent systems, and with field, star-forming galaxies of
similar luminosities. We find that the intrinsic flattening in this
low-luminosity regime is almost independent of the environment in which the
galaxy resides--but there is a hint that objects may be slightly rounder in
denser environments. The comparable flattening distributions of low-luminosity
galaxies that have experienced very different degrees of environmental effects
suggests that internal processes are the main drivers of galaxy structure at
low masses--with external mechanisms playing a secondary role.Comment: Accepted to ApJ. 18 pages, 12 figure
The Local Group Census: planetary nebulae in Sextans B
Five planetary nebulae (PNe) have been discovered in the nearby dwarf
irregular galaxy. Emission line images were obtained using the Wide Field
Camera of the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) at La Palma (Spain). The
candidate PNe were identified by their point-like appearance and relatively
strong [OIII] emission-line fluxes. They are located within a galactocentric
distance of 2.8 arcmin, corresponding to 1.1 kpc at the distance of Sextans B.
Luminosities are in the range 1800--5600Lsolar. Sextans B is one of the
smallest dwarf irregular galaxies with a PN population. The number of PNe
detected suggest an enhanced star formation rate between 1 and 5 Gyr ago.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure
Geometrical tests of cosmological models. II. Calibration of rotational widths and disc scaling relations
This series of papers is dedicated to a new technique to select galaxies that
can act as standard rods and standard candles in order to perform geometrical
tests on large samples of high redshift galaxies to constrain different
cosmological parameters. The goals of this paper are (1) to compare different
rotation indicators in order to understand the relation between rotation
velocities extracted from observations of the Halpha line and the [OII]3727
line, and (2) determine the scaling relations between physical size, surface
brightness and magnitude of galaxies and their rotation velocity using the
SFI++, a large catalog of nearby galaxies observed at I-band. A good
correlation is observed between the rotation curve-derived velocities of the
Halpha and [OII] observations, as well as between those calculated from
velocity histograms, justifying the direct comparison of velocities measured
from Halpha rotation curves in nearby galaxies and from [OII] line widths at
higher redshifts. To provide calibration for the geometrical tests, we give
expressions for the different scaling relations between properties of galaxies
(size, surface brightness, magnitude) and their rotation speeds. Apart from the
Tully-Fisher relation, we derive the size-rotation velocity and surface
brightness-rotation velocity relations with unprecedentedly small scatters. We
show how the best size-rotation velocity relation is derived when size is
estimated not from disc scale lengths but from the isophotal diameter r23.5,
once these have been corrected for inclination and extinction effects.Comment: 14 pages and 10 figures. A&A submitte
Structure of Disk Dominated Galaxies I. Bulge/Disk Parameters, Simulations, and Secular Evolution
(Abridged) A robust analysis of galaxy structural parameters, based on the
modeling of bulge and disk brightnesses in the BVRH bandpasses, is presented
for 121 face-on and moderately inclined late-type spirals. Each surface
brightness (SB) profile is decomposed into a sum of a generalized Sersic bulge
and an exponential disk. The reliability and limitations of our bulge-to-disk
(B/D) decompositions are tested with extensive simulations of galaxy brightness
profiles (1D) and images (2D). Galaxy types are divided into 3 classes
according to their SB profile shapes; Freeman Type-I and Type-II, and a third
``Transition'' class for galaxies whose profiles change from Type-II in the
optical to Type-I in the infrared. We discuss possible interpretations of
Freeman Type-II profiles. The Sersic bulge shape parameter for nearby Type-I
late-type spirals shows a range between n=0.1-2 but, on average, the underlying
surface density profile for the bulge and disk of these galaxies is adequately
described by a double-exponential distribution. We confirm a coupling between
the bulge and disk with a scale length ratio r_e/h=0.22+/-0.09, or
h_bulge/h_disk=0.13+/-0.06 for late-type spirals, in agreement with recent
N-body simulations of disk formation and models of secular evolution. This
ratio increases from ~0.20 for late-type spirals to ~0.24 for earlier types.
The similar scaling relations for early and late-type spirals suggest
comparable formation and/or evolution scenarios for disk galaxies of all Hubble
types.Comment: 78 pages with 23 embedded color figures + tables of galaxy structural
parameters. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The
interested reader is strongly encouraged to ignore some of the low res
figures within; instead, download the high resolution version from
http://www.astro.ubc.ca/people/courteau/public/macarthur02_disks.ps.g
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